Sunday, 30 December 2012

If you resolve to do just one thing in 2013, let it be this - please buy more poetry books and I don't mean anthologies or dead white men, or worse, anthologies of dead white men, I mean new books by poets writing now, and read them and love them, and read them again and love them some more.

Poets need readers and readers need poets.

It's all very well going to poetry readings to be entertained for free, but please, oh lovely audience, please buy our books. You will not make us rich, my royalties pay for nothing more than my train fare to visit my publisher, but you will earn our undying love, keep the presses afloat and our art-form alive.

Edward Lear's 200th Birthday exhibition at the Ashmolean was, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment. Not enough Nonsense! But then, the whole point was to show his wonderful illustrations of birds, which are breathtaking in their detail. I just wish there had been more of them. I was much less taken by his landscapes of Italy and Egypt (sketches, water colours and oils) as they are all a bit "Victorian Romanticism of the Orient" for me (see also Roberts, Holman Hunt, Dadd etc.) That's my fault though, not Lear's. He is a product of his time after all and had not read Said. However there is one brilliant oil of an eviscerated tower, which has given me ideas.

I'd have welcomed much more Nonsense as there was precious little of the Owl and Pussycat and those bad Limericks, although hilariously a pin board was provided for visitors to write their own, with the same mixed results. This is not a poetic form that I ever want to dabble in. Someone remind me of that if ever I do.

Hurry if you want to take a peek, it's all over on 6 January. Also, if you want to see the brilliant Pre-Raphaelite paintings you're in for a disappointment as most of the best ones, especially the large canvases by Holman Hunt, Millais and Rosetti, and the Burne-Jones painted wardrobe are all in Tate Britain for a special exhibition, which I toyed with attending until I realised I'd be paying £14 to look at paintings from both museums I can see for nothing any other time.

Saturday, 29 December 2012

In her essay in the current (Winter 2012) edition of Poetry Review[1],
Pascale Petit explains that for her there is still a difference between men and
women’s writing. That old chestnut. I thought that was a first or second wave
Western feminist debate that was long over, done, dusted, buried. I remember
writing about it myself over twenty years ago.

There are a few points on which I specifically want to take issue with
her. I disagree with the proposition that difference (if indeed there is any)
comes from women’s ‘closer relationship
with the body and its wonder, shock and messiness’. Not to doubt that women
do indeed write from and of the body, there is plenty of that around, I do it
myself, but it seems disingenuous to therefore imply that men do not, or worse
that the male body is less wonderful, shocking and messy. Take this for example
from Matthew Caley’s poem Upside Down:

‘Apparently
Ezra Pound would lay at languorous angles on the inevitable chaise-longue

-feet up,
head down – believing as he did

that so prone his seminal fluid would flow
from his testicles to his forehead, thus energising

Next is her implication that there are female subjects or themes,
territory where men seldom tread. Granted men may not write too many poems
about getting their hair done, but many write about other so-called ‘female’ concerns.
For example take Michael Longley’s delight at the first visit of his grandson
in The Leveret:

And I have not had to hunt for these examples, they all come from recent
books waiting to be properly shelved in my library. They are from contemporary writers
I have read in the last year or so. They are current and now. Of course one
could tit-for-tat this debate until one falls over with exhaustion. As Petit,
in welcoming plurality, herself acknowledges, for many gender is not relevant
to their craft. Here here.

Rather I propose something more profitable in potentially making such
distinctions and which Petit starts to explore in the case of contemporary
Chinese poetry: that is the relevance of the question outside the relative
comforts of the West. I would certainly like to know more about and understand
whether it is prescient in cultures and literary traditions where for, say, the
mutilated, black-clothed woman, the notion of female equality might still be a
sick joke. If someone could point me in the right direction on that, I’d be
grateful.

Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Today I learned with great sadness that Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll has died. I heard him read but once. I met him but once, at Aldeburgh four years ago. It was late in the evening and the book stall was finally quiet enough for me to browse and decide where to invest some prize money I had won in a poetry competition. His huge book of conversations and discussions with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones, had not long come out. I decided on that. As I looked up to hand the book seller my hard won cash, there was Dennis. He signed it immediately, told me a little of its genesis and congratulated me on my writing. What a generous man. He will be much missed I'm sure.

Monday, 24 December 2012

The first workshop of 2013 will be on 6 January at 12h30 until 14h30 in the library at Shakespeare and Company. The theme is THE CITY and there will be lots of writing prompts and suggested exercises for writing about cities and their contested spaces. See you there!

Friday, 21 December 2012

A rather eclectic exhibition, meaning wide ranging and somewhat illogical, but nonetheless interesting. Of special note are the Nazca mummies, which I have never seen before and the shrunken heads. Not exactly for the faint hearted.

However the most shocking and moving things were the tonsuring of so-called women collaborators at the end of the war. I like to think they had done nothing more heinous than fallen in love. Capa's photographs were familiar, but the film footage was truly shocking: laughing crowds including children, women being beaten and one with blood running down her face where she had clearly been punched. Shameful stuff that needs to be seen.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Of course, if you meant to see the Bohemian exhibition, this is not the right place to go. No matter. We enjoyed this one just as much, all the more for a two for one offer care of my visitor's Eurostar ticket . I shall watch out for that again. Amazingly no queue to speak of at 3pm on a Sunday.

So, Renoir(could have done without quite so much of him, but he is a pet hate of mine), Manet, Monet, Tissot et al, mainly portraits, mostly the famous ones, and costumes - fantastic.

Apart from wondering whether all women in the nineteenth century were suffering from severe malnutrition or a surfeit of corsetry, it was great to see so many beautiful gowns. There are some fabulous blacked beaded numbers with amazing pin tucking and pleats that I could actually see myself wearing if, of course, I was suffering from malnutrition or a surfeit of corsetry.

Ideally the blue velvet and wool gown with a long pocket next to the bustle for a fan or parasol is clearly something that needs to come back into fashion immediately; so very useful for an ipod or whatever. Mostly I wanted to take home the cream silk parasol with black lace covering and several pairs of silk shoes. Another day...

Friday, 14 December 2012

Anyone who has looked
beyond Cape Town’s tourist traps will smile in recognition at these closely
observed poems about the city and wider environs.

A five-month work
stint in early 2011 proved a fruitful time for Welsh poet Kate Noakes, whose
third collection this is. Her subversive
eye found rich resources in the place, its past and present politics, and life.

Poems range from ‘a yard
of silver’ snoek to the ‘Green and yellow blanket man’ begging aggressively in
Long Street, from hadedas ‘plagued with smoker’s cough’ to quagga and zebra
‘bar-coded for its foals to find home’, from forced removals to fracking and
HIV transmission. Noakes employs a deft
touch, vivid imagery and frequent humour.

This elegantly printed
hardback is an empathetic, thought-provoking invitation to view our city with
fresh eyes.

Sunday, 2 December 2012

A drop-in workshop led by Kate Noakes on the first Sunday of every month at 12h30 - 14h30 in the Library at Shakespeare and Company. It is open to everyone, beginner to prize winner, and is designed to get you writing prose and poetry. Kate provides ideas and writing prompts on a theme each month. It is not a feedback workshop.The first workshop for 2013 will be on 6 January.

Kate has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan, has published three books of poetry and has taught creative writing for Oxford University. She is presently working on a novel. The workshop cost is 10 Euros. All you need to do is bring is writing equipment and something to lean on.